Dheepan

Homeless, landless, adrift, isolated, three Sri Lankan compatriots must take on roles to which they are unaccustomed and pretend to be a loving family while acculturating within a French ghetto.

Fortunate to have the jobs they do, ubiquitous crime and angst-ridden violence reminds them of the civil war they fled, as they take things one day at a time and do their best to productively integrate.

Husband, mother, child.

Suddenly existing as a distraughtly supportive family, trials test their ability to exemplify while Dheepan (Jesuthasan Antonythasan) remembers the leader he once was.

Forced to adapt while remaining conscientious, submission conflicts with engrained volatility, peace of mind seemingly unattainable, grating and rasping, exasperatingly askew.

Jacques Audiard's Dheepan presents a desperate situation replete with complicated necessities which solemnly challenge the will to live.

A supreme exercise in extreme sublimation, appearing calm to reflect the nascence, impossibility contends with the imaginative as competing visions of the sure and steady clash effecting labour, language, schooling and family.

Race isn't really an issue in the film, but it reminded me of an idea I had a while back.

It has to do with racist horrors and the problems minority groups face when trying to integrate within the dominant culture at large.

Whether you're from Asia, Africa, Europe, or the Americas, people share common characteristics differentiated by culture yet unified through struggle, through the struggle to obtain work, food and lodging.

If a group whose skin colour or ethnicity is different from another group's systematically prevents that group from being able to access meaningful employment, nutritious food, and spacious lodging, simply because they don't possess a specific skin colour or ethnicity, the oppressed group isn't going to accept such a state of affairs and will continue to want meaningful employment, nutritious food, and spacious lodging.

Films often tragically examine the plight of ethnic minorities as they attempt to assert themselves in the face of overwhelmingly dismissive racist cultural attitudes.

Dheepan showcases members of an ethnic minority group struggling to better their lives in order to live without the constant threat of violence, good people fed up with having to live in fear, capable of taking the risks required to change things for the better.

It uses members of a minority group to combat racist attitudes by demonstrating their desire for peace, for a good life, universal human desires, without focusing on race.

By taking race out of the equation it skilfully finds common ground for every race and ethnicity without sensationalizing its subject matter.

Thought provoking, well done.

A family blossoming in the unconscious.